Health care chief: Personally engage employees for success

Health care chief: Personally engage employees for success

To build a company that has a strong reputation and is a desirable destination for potential workers, management must personally engage and communicate with its employees and recognize that they have lives outside of work, said an industry leader.

“Organizations that value their employees as a core value tend to be more successful,” said Bruce Crowther, CEO of Northwest Community Healthcare, speaking to business professionals at The Business Ledger’s Best Places to Work ceremony at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort.

“In every case, culture trumps strategy.”

Crowther said that one of Northwest’s core beliefs is constantly being aware that employees have a life outside of the organization, and that helping them deal with personal issues can enhance productivity and camaraderie.

“If we can remove some of that stuff, then they can be more focused on the work they do—not to mention the goodwill you have created with them,” Crowther said.

To that end, Northwest has created an on-site concierge service that assists employees with day-to-day activities that could otherwise cause unnecessary stress and lower productivity.

Crowther pointed out that the pending retirement of many baby boomers will create a labor shortage that can only be adequately filled if a company is attractive to potential employees. In the health care industry, those shortages will tend toward the nursing profession.

“A very quick way for a hospital to go out of business is to not have an adequate supply of good, competent nurses,” said Crowther. “Our nursing vacancy rate is less than 1 percent.”

Another way to stave off employee shortages is to encourage extended tenure within the company. Northwest Community supports employees in pursuit of in-house career advancement by offering training programs and tuition reimbursement.

“There’s a whole lot less risk to educating someone that you already know, than there is having them leave and bringing someone in from the outside,” Crowther said. “We all know the costs of recruitment relative to the costs of advancement.”

Communication and expressed appreciation are crucial for employee morale and retention. Northwest works hard at bridging communication gaps between employee and management by fostering an informal atmosphere where the individual is just as important as the work they’re doing.

“It’s important that we be able to connect on a personal level,” said Crowther. “It’s important that they know they’re appreciated.”

He referred to a Northwest program of handing out Starbucks cards in the winter to employees as they leave work.

“Little things like that make a huge impression on them.”

Jeremy Stoltz, Staff Writer

Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 (Archive on Monday, July 07, 2008)
Posted by jstoltz Contributed by jstoltz

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